Police Departments Turn To YouTube To Nab Suspects

Being a criminal isn’t as easy as it used to be. The internet is so vast that it can reach out to millions of people for very little money and some police departments have turned to the popular video sharing website owned by Google to help find wanted criminals and suspects in crimes.

This method could be hit or miss because of the amount of videos uploaded daily to the website.

“You’ve got to ask yourself, ‘What’s the penetration? How many people are going to watch it? What would make people watch it?” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former police officer and prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Perhaps the most-publicized example was in Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, where police in December posted a 72-second surveillance video on YouTube in hopes of locating a suspect in a fatal stabbing outside a hip-hop concert. Detective Sgt. Jorge Lasso said the video ultimately received more than 35,000 “hits,” and police had enough information within two weeks for an arrest.

Lasso said it’s hard to know exactly what role YouTube played since the clip generated so much media attention. While other departments that posted on YouTube simply relied on a press release to let the public know, Lasso went straight to the population that mattered and announced the clip on Web sites frequented by hip-hop fans.

Although this sounds like a revolutionary way to hunt down and find criminals, I have a sneaking suspicion that it won’t be able to compete with the more mainstream outlets like AMW. I would think that most people aren’t going to want sit around watching grainy security camera videos.

I suppose it’s worth a shot if you can spread the word, though.

Do you think that YouTube is a viable way to search for suspects and criminals?

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